


What Happened Next

by helarctos



Category: Oryx and Crake - Atwood
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 22:44:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helarctos/pseuds/helarctos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><span class="u">Oryx and Crake</span> ends on a cliffhanger, which <span class="u">The Year of the Flood</span> then picked up.  <span class="u">The Year of the Flood</span> then ends on a cliffhanger itself.  What happened next?</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Happened Next

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Severuslovesme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severuslovesme/gifts).



I have to admit a couple of uncomfortable things. First off, Jimmy is nuts. I mean, I used to say that about him before, but I meant it a different way, like you do when someone does something stupid, or just something that doesn't make sense. Not loony, you know? Now, he really is nuts. Loony. Whatever you want to call it.

Different from Amanda, who's in and out of a Fallow state. That, I get. I really do. It hurts to think about how much those Painballers hurt her.

Actually I was afraid that when we all woke up, the morning after Saint Julian and All Souls, Amanda would have killed the Painballers. While they were still tied up. Why did that make me feel afraid, to think that? I don't know. It's not that I wouldn't have felt more comfortable with them out of the picture. A lot more comfortable. And they deserved it for what they did to Amanda, and to Oates. I wanted them to be dead, I can admit that. I think I just didn't want anyone to have to kill them. Better for them to die on their own, like the other Painballer that Toby found first.

But as it turned out, Amanda didn't kill them. After the Children of Crake left – that's what Jimmy called them, those naked people with their torches and singing, who Toby and I met before – after they left, we made sure the Painballers were tied up super-securely, and then we went to sleep for the night, because Toby said there was no way we could make it back to the MaddAddam folks without getting a good amount of rest, and she was right. Frankly I wasn't sure that Jimmy would ever make it there no matter how long he rested, even after the Crakers (another name Jimmy had for them) had purred over his messed-up foot a whole lot.

I like the Crakers. We taught them the hymn for Saint Julian and All Souls. Apart from their wanting to add in bits about Children of Oryx, they took to it right away. They asked a lot fewer questions than Jimmy seemed worried they'd ask, even at the parts about God. Probably because it was a song, so it didn't have to be literal. "We're hard-wired for music," Jimmy said, and then he giggled like he'd said something hilarious, which he really hadn't.

Anyway, so we went to sleep. Theoretically. We were going to take turns. Toby took the first watch and when she couldn't stay awake any longer she woke me up. Amanda wasn't moving and I couldn't tell whether she was awake or asleep. I couldn't tell whether the Painballers were asleep either, with them propped against the treetrunk and tied in a sitting position. Jimmy lay on his back. He was snoring a little. His snoring was rhythmic and weirdly comforting, like the sound of the sea, and I had been through a lot that day, and – well, I'm not proud to say it, but I fell asleep.

The sound of the spraygun woke me up. Toby was already jumping upright before I could get my feet under me. Jimmy had the spraygun and he was peppering the treetrunk and the Painballers with bullets. They were obviously already dead, but he didn't stop. He didn't say anything, either.

"Shit," muttered Toby, "he's wasting bullets." She wasn't going to go anywhere near him to stop him, though, and she wouldn't let me, not that I was tempted in the least. Amanda just watched him; she didn't even get up.

He only stopped when the spraygun ran out of ammunition. "You won't touch her again," he informed the dead meat that used to be the two Painballers. Looking at their bodies, I thought about the bone soup we'd eaten that night, and the Mo'Hair legs Toby had gleaned from liobam kill, and I thought that meat is meat. I threw up everything in my stomach. That didn't make Toby happy either, but she didn't say anything to me about it. I could just tell.

Amanda said: "That's a start."

"Jimmy?" I wasn't sure he'd recognize his name any more, he was that out of it, so for good measure I added the Crakers' name for him: "Snowman?"

"No one is going to hurt Oryx ever again," he said without turning around. He had his back to us, facing the treetrunk where the Painballers were tied, so I thought he was looking at them, until I heard him choking up and I realized he was crying.

 

* * *

 

"This is all really complicated," I tried to explain to Toby. We were traveling back to the MaddAddam compound, on foot, very slowly. Toby insisted we needed to stay behind Jimmy –because, she said, after that stunt he'd pulled, it wasn't a good idea to have him at our back. Since we were walking behind him, and he had a badly injured foot, that meant our pace was severely hampered. But we would've been going slowly anyway, for Amanda; and what were we going to do, drag Jimmy on a travois? We could have made one -- between Toby's Eve knowledge and my Young Bioneer skills we were actually comparatively well-prepared for this post-Flood world, which I guess was the entire point – but we didn't have the strength to drag it.

"Snowman's real name is Jimmy. I used to go to high school with him at HelthWyzer, and we both went to the same college, the same one where Amanda went too. They were a couple for a while – that was after I had to leave school –" It's hard to keep a linear narrative going on the fly. I kept remembering pieces and throwing them in, and then that broke the flow of time so it wasn't obvious what years I was talking about, where who fit, when what happened.

"Small world," was Toby's comment, but she wasn't saying it in a mean way. She sounded thoughtful.

"So he should remember Amanda," I finished, "but instead he thinks she's Oryx, which doesn't make any sense, because I know who Oryx was. I saw her at Scales. She was Glenn's main plank – Crake's main plank." Toby would know the name Crake, wouldn't know the name Glenn. Jimmy had been raving about Crake intermittently as well, and only called him Crake when the Children showed up too. It was entirely possible I was the only person left in the world who remembered the guy as Glenn.

 

That was a very strange thought. I shook it off. I told Toby, "Oryx didn't look anything like Amanda, except their skin color was a little similar. Oryx was an Asian Fusion type, you know the type?" Which Amanda wasn't.

"As long as Oryx is someone he wants to protect," said Toby, in that measuring way of hers, "he's not going to try hurting us." So that was good, and we didn't have to talk about it any more. I was a little disappointed, though, because I kind of wanted to talk about it.

 

* * *

At a certain point, less far from our night's camp than I liked to think, Jimmy couldn't keep going. I volunteered to stay with him while Toby took Amanda to get whoever might be able to help carry him – maybe even Zeb, if he'd gotten back already from looking for Adam One and the other Gardeners – but Toby nixed that. "I'm not leaving you here, little Ren," she said. I could tell how tired she was by the fact she let herself call me _little Ren._ "Jimmy can fend for himself. You might not do as well. I'd sooner leave Amanda with him than I'd leave you, and I'm not going to do that either."

So Amanda and Toby and I went the rest of the way without him. We couldn't talk Ivory Bill or any of the other MaddAddams into coming back with us for Jimmy. Croze said he would if I wanted, but I needed to rest too, and when I finally went out there with Croze to look for Jimmy, no one was in the place I thought I remembered us leaving him.

"The Paradice models are probably taking care of him," offered Croze. I wanted to believe that, so I said yes, and we didn't go out looking for him again.

It was the Crakers who brought him back to us, of all things. They had decided since we had extra skins like Snowman, we could talk to Crake, and they wanted us to ask Crake what they should do to heal Snowman. It didn't occur to them to ask for medical help; they wanted to use Lotis Blue's wristwatch. "Snowman's watch only works for Snowman to talk to Crake," they explained very earnestly.

Zeb had come back by then, with Shackie and Black Rhino and Katuro (but without Adam One or any of the other Gardeners). He wasn't pleased to see Jimmy at all. He called him Thickney, and said he was nothing but trouble. But he didn't object when Toby broke out the maggot pack and set to work on Jimmy's foot.

Thanks to the maggots, Jimmy's a lot better now – in the body. The mind's another story.

* * *

The other thing I don't want to admit is that Amanda doesn't seem to be getting better. Rebecca is taking care of her more than anyone else, and I keep thinking that if anyone can get through to her, Rebecca can. Amanda will do food-prep work, routine stuff like paring and dicing and prepping. "Of course it's safe to let her use a knife," said Rebecca when I asked. "The worst thing that could happen is that she'd turn it against herself. And if she's of a mind to do that, she'll do it whether we give her the knife or not. Let the girl work, Ren. To be useful and productive is more powerfully healing than any old spa weekend." She'd been enjoying the occasional good-natured joke about AnooYoo, ever since Toby and I turned up in those pink top-to-toes. Toby didn't seem bothered by it ever, and sometimes she actually laughed, the times when Rebecca added an exaggerated wink – pantomime of the AnooYoo logo.

I understand why she's hurt, and I understand it will take her time to heal. I'm just afraid she never will. Amanda's tough – I thought she'd been through worse than this before I met her, when she was trading sex to survive. But she wasn't trading with Painballers, and I guess that makes the difference. You can't trade with Painballers. They only take.

* * *

This is the last and the worst thing. I think I might be in love with Amanda. It's especially bad if I think she's never going to emerge from her Fallow state, because then not only is it uncomfortable to be in love with her, it's also completely pointless.

It seems wrong even to call it love. I'm not sure what else I can call it. I don't want to be with Croze, and I don't even want to be with Jimmy. Believe me, I thought hard about this one. I wrote down a list of what-ifs. If Jimmy got better, totally healed mind and body, and stopped talking about owl-women in the trees, and became a responsible and valued member of post-Flood society, would I want to be his woman? Forget the green-leaf Gardener ritual, would I even want to kiss him? Hold hands with him? I don't want to do any of those things any more. It's Amanda I care about. I always thought she was beautiful. I still do, only now I want to do more for her than I used to. If Amanda gets well enough that I'm sure she can understand what I'm saying, and sure she's truly listening, I think I'm going to tell her.

As soon as she gets better.

As soon as I'm sure what it is I want to say.

* * *

Today I head over to Toby and Zeb's, to ask Toby if I can have a Vigil. I need to figure things out about Amanda. Zeb's chopping wood when I got there, and when he sees me he stops and says "Hey," and asks me what business brings me here, which is a joking way of telling me he's noticed I don't come around so often. I've been keeping to myself. Laying low.

"It's girl business," I say, and he makes a show of fake disgust. "Say no more," like it would gross him out too much even to hear another word. "She's over with the bees."

So I go to the hives. But Toby isn't alone. There's someone else with her, all swathed in the makeshift bee-veils we'd rigged up, and that person is holding both arms out, and all the bees are milling and buzzing around them.

Toby's standing off to the side. "Speak to them in complete sentences," she's saying. I'm about to go away, planning on coming back another time when she hasn't got company. Just then, the figure speaks.

"Bees, I bring news of Oryx," comes the muffled voice from within the veils.

It's Jimmy, or Snowman. Whoever he wants to be now. Maybe he has the right to decide who that is.

Maybe things are taking a turn for the better after all.

I decide I want to stay, to hear what he has to tell them.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd written a lengthy and thinky author's note, only to have archive gremlins devour it, or my own unfamiliarity with the system may have resulted in failure to upload properly. Either way, the substance was this:
> 
> Margaret Atwood will probably Joss most of what I've written here, and I look forward to it. She's saying she will write a follow-up to The Year of the Flood. It'll definitely be more complicated and neater than what I could come up with. Still, I do think it's fairly unambiguous that the people with the torches and singing at the end of the second book are the Children of Crake, given what we know about their fire-making ability and their hard-wired music; and I think Adam One's group has to have died of the JUVE plague, given the content of his final monologue. The rest of it -- we'll see. I do have a soft spot for Ren/Amanda, but I tried not to get too shippy.
> 
> I chose to stick with Ren's point of view in this fic because I didn't think a fic of this short length could handle the switch between Ren's first-person and Toby's third-person narration. Toby's one of my favorite characters ever, now. I had to include a substrate of Toby/Zeb, even though that isn't the focus.
> 
> I hope you enjoy the story, though I know it was the last on your list of requests. It was the only fandom on your list that I knew, and the one that must've resulted in my assignment. It turned out to be a gift to me, since I hadn't read The Year of the Flood yet at the time, only Oryx and Crake. So, thank you for the occasion to dig around in one of my favorite dystopias!


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